


Possession

by Seiya234



Series: Transcendence AU [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Transcendence AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3841654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, the one time Dipper Pines possesses his brother-in-law and it does Not End Well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Henry, I want your body.”

Henry looked up from his newspaper he was reading on the porch swing, and at his brother in law, who was hovering nervously nearby. 

“Dipper, I’m flattered, but I’m married to your sister,” he said as gently as possible.

“ _No_  I need to be _in_ you!”

Henry blushed as red as his hair. “Um, Dipper, I, um, thought, you, um…er…”

Dipper blushed and then burst aflame from the sheer embarrassment. 

“Oh  _fuck_ I _need_ …no, I want…no…”

Dipper threw up his hands and screamed in frustration, which rattled the timbers of the Shack. Then he blipped away.

He came back a second later with a sock puppet. More specifically, a sock puppet that looked like Mabel and-

“Oh. _Oooooh,_ ” Henry said, understanding dawning on him. 

“Yeah,” Dipper confirmed, hand behind his head and a blush still evident on his face. 

Henry put his paper aside.

“Why do you need me?” Henry asked.

Dipper gave him a pointed look. “Because Mabel isn’t here.” The ‘duh’ was left implicit.

He had a point. Mabel was currently having a spa…girly…weekend thing with Pacifica, Wendy, Grenda, and Candy. They had left with seven bottles of tequila in the trunk of the car, and Henry had been checking the news every day in a five county area to make sure nothing had burnt down or exploded.  And even if Stan hadn’t been on a purchasing trip in Florida, Henry was pretty sure Dipper wouldn’t be asking him anyway.

“But why do you need me? Mabel comes back tomorrow. Can’t it wait?” Henry asked. 

Dipper scowled. “Well, by this time tomorrow half of the town will have been eaten by the wendigo that’s currently prowling in the forest.”

Henry froze. His parents had taken him out of the Transcendence adjustment classes that were standard now in schools (albeit under a different name since he had been in high school) but three years of dating (and now marriage) with Mabel had quickly brought him up to speed.

And one thing he had learned that was there were some creatures, some beings, that were nothing but bad news.

If there was a wendigo in Gravity Falls….Henry shuddered.

“Okay,” Henry conceded.

There was an awkward pause. Dipper started to say something but flickered in and out, got as far as a “Not aga-” and poofed off of the corporeal sphere. Luckily, Henry was used to this and got from his pocket a card with Dipper’s circle printed on it and a Tootsie Roll. He picked a scab and placed it on the card.

“Candy for you if we finish our conversation,” Henry said, and Dipper reappeared.

“Tootsie Rolls again?” Dipper complained, though that didn’t stop him from taking the piece of candy and unwrapping it with clawed fingers.

“Take it up with Mabel next time she goes to the store; now what would this entail?”

“I use your body to kick some wendigo butt.”

Henry lifted up his glasses a bit and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dip, I love you and I trust you, but you really got to give me a little more information than that. I’m not Mabel, I’ve not been doing this since thirteen.”

Dipper huffed. “I’m going to need another piece of candy.”

Henry went inside, got the Snickers bar he had grabbed for himself from the gas station earlier, came back outside, and handed it to Dipper. He couldn’t help but smile at the way Dipper’s face lit up and made a mental reminder to remind Mabel to get a bag of mini-Snickers next time she went candy shopping. 

“So,” Dipper said with his mouth full, bits of chocolate spraying out onto Henry’s face. “Since I’m not being summoned and I’m still having a hard time staying on this plane for long periods of time, I can’t just go deal with this wendigo myself. So I need to possess someone-“

“And that’s where I come in.”

Dipper swallowed, and took another bite of his Snickers bar.

“Yup. We make a deal; I get to use your body to kill a wendigo and you get…um, I don’t know, does the truck need fixing?”

Henry scowled slightly.

“I just fixed it Dipper.”

“Well your fixes don’t ever last,” Dipper replied, completely blowing Henry off. “But yeah, we make a deal, I kick some butt, then I vacate the premises. Slam bam thank you ma’am.”

Henry paled. “Um, you’ll be careful with me right?”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “ _Relax_ I’m not going to break you, jeez. You’re my brother, I love you.”

He paused, and then said, “Also, Mabel would kill me, and I think she could actually do it.”

Henry thought a minute. He couldn’t help but worry. What if Dipper didn’t give his body back, and kept it and no, no, _no_. He trusted Dipper. He trusted Dipper with his life, with Mabel’s life. This would be fine.

“You can possess me to fight off the wendigo that is about to destroy our town,” Henry began carefully (because for better or worse, Dipper was a demon, and deals were not to be made lightly with them.) “As long as once you are done fighting the wendigo you leave my body.”

There. He was pretty sure he had gotten everything.

“And what can I give you in return? This is a de̡̧a̸l̸ after all?”

Henry shrugged. “I don’t really want anything.”

Dipper ran his hands through his hair. “Henry, that’s not the point, we can’t do this until you say what you want out of this. I can’t do a one-sided deal.”

In between deals made with candy and dinner, it was easy to forget that deals….were deals.

“Can I think for a second?” Henry asked.

“Sure, but um, maybe not too long? That wendigo is getting close, I can feel it.”

Henry paled and he struggled to think of what he could possibly want or need. Finally, it came to him.

“Can you fix the roof at my work? It’s leaking over the rare book section.”

Dipper glared at him.

_“S̯e̢̖ͅr̮̬͉͟i̞͍̳̜̲o̳͕̳̞u̕s͚̗͕͚͞l̮̙̠̳̲̬͖y̩̩͢?̠͎̪”_

Henry couldn’t help but smile a bit at Dipper’s expression. “It’s you and Mabel and Stan’s fault for treating me so good,” Henry gently ribbed.

An unidentifiable expression flashed across Dipper’s face for a second, before he got to business. He held out a hand, which burst into blue fire.

“I will possess your body for the time it takes to get rid of the wendigo, and in return I will fix the leaky roof at your work. Do̸ ͞w̨e͠ ḩa͟ve ą ̶d̡e͏al?”

Henry looked at the blue flames that enveloped his brother’s hand, tried not to think about how he had never made a deal like this before, tried to remember that he _trusted_ Dipper, tried to get rid of that little voice screaming “He’s going to keep your body, he’ll never leave he-“

Henry took Dipper’s hand in his, marveled at how the flames enveloped his own hand yet didn’t burn.

“Deal.”

Dipper gave Henry a _not reassuring in the slightest what had he just agreed to_ shark grin, and then disappeared.

Nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen for another minute, and Henry was starting to feel a little confused. Mabel had described possession as a gentle pushing feeling, of one minute being you and the next looking at the top of your head “and it’s weird the first five or six times but you get used to it also your head looks _so cool_ from behind it’s _amazing!”_

But he was feeling nothing, and he was still _him_ and in control.

“Uh, Dipper? Are you around?”

Dipper suddenly popped back into his sight.

“I was just fixing the roof so my end of the deal was upheld in case the wendigo eats you!”

Henry literally felt the blood drain from his face and the edges of his vision go black.

Dipper barked out a laugh, and he was definitely acting stranger than usual, more manic. “Seriously, _re͝la̡x_ Henry, you’re Mabel’s favorite fleshbag, I won’t let anything happen to you. Now take a deep breath and one, two-“

Dipper stepped right up to Henry and grinned, showing off each razor sharp tooth.

_“-t̬̤h̪r̯ͅe̟͔͖̝̤̦͢ͅe̺͞!̙͎͔̣͔̕”_

And then Dipper stepped into Henry.

Henry expected to be pushed out, to fly above in the air around his head, like his wife.

That didn’t happen.

Instead it felt like he had gone swimming in the Pacific in December. It felt like his heart had frozen in place, unable to beat, his lungs seized up and shriveled into raisins.

It was as if every single cell in his body was rebelling against this intrusion into his very being, like he was going to spontaneously combust and burn to a pile of ashes on the porch…

 And then suddenly he wasn’t in control any more.

He could see out of his eyes, feel the weight of his clothes and the touch of wind on his skin, but it wasn’t Henry who was standing up, or stretching out his arms.

It was Dipper.

“Oh, wow, Henry, you are so _tall_! I can grab stuff from the top shelf in the kitchen now. Oh wow, this model is _great_!”

Henry didn’t respond because he wasn’t over how fucking weird it was to hear his own voice but not his words.

He felt Dipper stretch out his arms, shake out his legs.

“ _Seriously_ Henry this is amazing! Do you even know how _strong_ you are? No wonder you always bring the groceries in on your own! You could probably break someone’s neck with these hands, _no_ problem.”

Henry felt sick.

“I don’t want to,” he reminded Dipper gently from the darkness behind thei- his, _his_ eyes.

He felt Dipper take a deep breath, in, out, in, out, and relax hands that had clenched without either of them knowing.

“Yeah….yeah. I’m sorry Henry.”

“Why am I still in here with you?” Henry asked. “Mabel said she usually follows you in that creepy sock puppet that she made-?”

It was weird; he wasn’t using his mouth to speak obviously, had no control of his body. He was a passenger in his flesh. But he was still here, still within the mind (brain? Nope, that was too weird and Henry was going to not think about that now) and still able to speak to Dipper.

Dipper blushed, and Henry couldn’t help but marvel a bit at how in the backseat (as it were) he could almost disinterestedly observe the motions that brought blood to the swelling vessels of his cheeks, the rush of hormones that prompted that response.

He hemmed and hawed, and finally in a rush, Dipper spat out “Iwasworriedaboutyou.”

“What?”

Dipper let out a large breath, and then did it again for the sheer sensation of it. “I…I just…Mabel is used to this and you aren’t and anything could happen to you when your soul is just floating loose, it could go anywhere, you could lose track of your body, other things could get you and…and…I…I want to keep an eye on you, okay?”

That…that was really sweet.

“Thanks Henry.”

Oh. Dipper had heard that hadn’t he?

“Yup.”

It was a good thing he wasn’t in control right now, Henry continued to think, otherwise he would be having the most massive headache over the implications of this.

“So don’t you have a wendigo to go hunt or something?” Henry asked, gently reminding Dipper why they were doing this whole thing in the first place.

“Need to get some things from the house first; seriously, it _rocks_ being this tall! I wish I could be this tall all the time,” Dipper crowed.

“You…you can do that any time Dipper.”

Dipper frowned. “No I can’t. I tried when I was fifteen, and Mabel laughed at me for three days.”

He had a point, Henry conceded as they went insi-

BONK. Dipper slammed their head hard into the doorframe, sending them flying backwards.

“ _Dipper!_ Don’t mess my body up! I’m not invincible like you are!”

“That felt _good…._ But how did that happen again?” Dipper said woozily from the ground.

Henry counted to ten and tried to remind himself that his brother in law was on the whole usually pretty intelligent.

“Dipper,” Henry said in the patronizing tone he usually saved for really obnoxious customers at the library. “I’m almost a foot taller than you. What do I do every time you see me come through the door?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Dipper got up. “You make this tall thing look easy,” he complained, and Henry managed to restrain himself from making a snide remark.

Dipper ducked and entered the house. He went for the kitchen and promptly smacked their head on the doorframe again.

Henry sighed and made a note to himself to go to the doctor after they were done with this.

\-------------------------

“I don’t think any of that was necessary,” Henry sighed as they made their way into the forest.

“What? I needed to get a knife and Mabel’s emergency bat. I mean, I can still do magic, but it’s not much in this body, don’t want to burn you out and-“

“Dipper, that wasn’t what I meant and you know it. I meant you didn’t need to chug fifteen sodas in three minutes, continually run my head into the door, put all the pots and pans on the top shelves, and poke my arm with forks.”

“Hey! I was being gentle!” Dipper grumbled.

“No, you were being weird.”

Henry paused, thought about his life and family for a second, and added, “Not good weird but creepy weird.”

Dipper was silent as he led them deeper and deeper into the woods.

Henry went on.

“What’s the big deal about you being in my body anyway? You have your own physical form half the time anyway, to eat and stick knives into and run into walls with. What’s so different or special about mine?”

Dipper continued to be silent and inwardly….more inwardly? Inwardlier? The English language could not really handle this kind of situation. Anyway, inwardly, Henry swore to himself.

“Hey, Dip, I’m sor-“

“It’s because this body is real, and mine isn’t,” Dipper interrupted.

Henry was stunned. “I….I thought that was…kind of your thing?” he finally managed to say, sounding unconsciously a bit like his wife.

Dipper frowned with their face. “Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but to be on this plane, to see and touch you and Stan…I need to constantly be concentrating and thinking and it’s _hard_ and this….this is easy. This is _nothing_. I don’t need to pretend to breathe or remember to make my heart beat...I just _am_.”

Henry had no idea what to say, what to do. He couldn’t even give Dipper a hug or a pat on the shoulder or throw Mabel at him. His brother was hurting and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Perhaps that awkward silence would have gone on indefinitely, stretching out like a taut rope ready to snap at any minute, but out of the corner of their eyes Henry saw a flash of something.

Something that smelt like rot and was inhumanly pale and gaunt and-

“ _Wendigo_ ,” Dipper growled, and began to run after it. As he did, it seemed to Henry that they were running faster, harder than he ever could or did on his own.

“Why do you think this wendigo would destroy the town?” Henry asked as Dipper jumped over a log, spread their long legs out as far as they could go, and devoured the ground in leaps and bounds.

“Didn’t you have to take a class in high school about all this, like Mabel did?”

“No,” Henry replied, ending that discussion.

“Oh well…The wendigo…it….it’s….it’s hunger without end,” Dipper finally managed to choke out. “They are never sated, and the only thing that quenches their hunger for even a second is human flesh.”

“So why haven’t they destroyed everything already?” Henry asked.

“I don’t feel like you’re taking this very seriously,” Dipper said worriedly.

“Oh I am, but I think that’s a legitimate question.”

Dipper sighed. “Wendigos, thankfully, hibernate for long periods of time, and they’re few and far between.”

“That seems kind of like a cop-out.”

“ _Henry!_ ” Dipper hissed and despite the situation, he sounded so much like Mabel at that moment that Dipper couldn’t help but laugh in the dark behind their eyes.

They skidded into a clearing and there the wendigo stood, gnawing on the innards of a deer that he had taken down out of sheer desperation. The wendigo was eight or nine feet tall and cadaverous, yellow-grey skin covered in matted hair and stretched horribly thin over bone. His stomach was swollen, horribly distended, and looked fit to burst through the skin. His teeth were blunt, yellowed, and chipped, teeth that were unused to tearing into flesh forced into doing just that. He was biting through skin and bone and hoof with no regard, only concerned with getting matter into his mouth as fast as possible.

The air around him roiled dark purple and grey, and Henry was worried Dipper had hit their head a little too hard earlier when suddenly he realized that was how _Dipper_ was seeing the wendigo. And now he could see in a long trailing shadow behind the creature the dozens…no, _hundreds_ of people the wendigo had killed. Henry had thought he smelled rot before but that was nothing compared to the rot of soul that Dipper could smell, could feel rolling off the wendigo in waves.  Henry felt sick to his stomach.

The wendigo looked up from the deer carcass and looked at them.

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed, and he sounded…he sounded…he sounded normal, which was somehow even more upsetting and terrifying than if he sounded like, well, a monster.

The wendigo grinned, revealing even more teeth that were rotten and yellowed. “It’s not often I have food come to me rather than me come to food but I will take it.”

“I̧ ̵th͘ink͢ ̨yo̴u̕'r̢e͜ ̛mista͢ken,” Dipper purred and oh god it was unsettling to hear his own voice but distorted. Henry was a little worried that Dipper was going to fuck up his throat.

Dipper snapped their fingers and _oh my god there was flames coming out of their hands._ “I a̧m͠ cer̶ţài̛nļy̨ _not_ f͠o͟od.”

Before Henry could say anything or raise an objection, Dipper had thrown their body at the wendigo. While Henry’s height was still less than that of the wendigo, the force of his body and the surprise was enough to bowl the wendigo over. Dipper immediately went about trying to burn the face off the wendigo, who responded by roaring, and throwing them off.

“Dipper, Dip, oh my god, Dipper _be careful with my fucking body Christ-“_

Dipper didn’t respond, busy as he was circling around the wendigo, waiting for an opportunity to strike, watching as the wendigo did the same as well. They both lunged at each other at the same time, and slammed together in a pile of snarls and fists. Hands went around Henry’s throat and squeezed, and even though Henry thankfully couldn’t feel it, through their eyes he saw their vision blur and black out around the edges.

“Normally I like to play with my food a little more,” the wendigo said in that chillingly normal, banal voice of his, “But please understand, I’ve not eaten in seven hours and I. am. _Starving_.”

“So̴ ̧a̴m͟ ͡I,” Dipper managed to grit out through their throat, and kicked up and into the inside of one of the wendigo’s legs, making the other man yelp in pain and jump back.

“ _What the fuck do you mean by that?”_ Okay so Henry was _maybe_ freaking out a bit but-

But he was expecting Dipper to kill the wendigo with magic and the bat they had gotten from behind the couch and the knife they had pilfered from Stan’s weird knife collection. Not say something like _that_ and then go after the wendigo again _with his hands and feet oh god­-_

Henry gave up trying to talk to Dipper, just held on (figuratively) for dear life while the wendigo and Dipper fought; punching, kicking, and clawing at each other. He knew from talking with Mabel that when Dipper possessed her she was stronger, faster, fought better. But it was one thing to hear his wife tell him that, and another to see his hands twist around an ankle and hear the bone break under them.

See their hands ( _his_ hands) clasp together and come slamming down on the wendigo’s left knee, shattering it (how did he know that? There was no way he could know that-)

Watch as his hand grabbed a hold of the wendigo’s stomach and _tore_ and oh god, oh god Dipper just ripped a hole in the monster’s torso and he felt sick, why wasn’t Dipper bothered by this, _why was he laughing?_

Look and realize that Dipper wasn’t stopping at the stomach, but had begun to rend and tear mindlessly at the rest of the body of the wendigo under him, sending blood and chunks of flesh flying as he ripped off fingers, toes, hair, the calf of his left leg-

The wendigo was keening, high pitched with mindless agony, and while Henry had no pity for this man who had doubtlessly killed many others in this fashion…neither did it make it right to do the same to him.

“Dipper, Dipper, stop…stop _playing_ with him and just kill him already,” Henry pleaded, hoping without hope that Dipper would listen.

In response, Dipper simply reached to the wendigo’s head, and snapped his neck, leaving the forest in silence. If Henry could let out a breath of relief, he would have.

“Is he dead?” Henry asked from the dark behind their eyes.

“Yup,” Dipper said, crouching down on their haunches to make sure, and then falling backward onto the ground because he still wasn’t used to the height of their body.

“So…um, I don’t want to be a jerk Dipper but can I have my body back now?” Henry asked gently.

Dipper said nothing. He was intently looking at their hands, covered in blood and chunks of flesh.

“Dipper, the wendigo is dead,” Henry prodded again, and maybe he was sounding a little impatient, but this whole thing had left him really rattled, and he just wanted to go home, puke a bit, and go to bed.

Dipper brought their hand up to their mouth and-

“No, Dipper, _do not-_ “

Their tongue darted out, and even though Henry had no real sensory input outside of sight and sound, suddenly he could taste again, bright tangy iron in his mouth.

Henry felt ill but he could feel Dipper’s delight.

_Oh god­-_

“Wow that is GREAT!” Dipper proceeded to suck the blood off of each one of Henry’s fingers and Henry felt like he was going to die. What was this going to do to his stomach…no.

What was Dipper going to do to him?

“Oh, and there’s a little left over too!” Dipper exclaimed, finding the piece of muscle that had gotten on the top of their left hand.

“Dipper, Dipper, please, if…if you care for me at all, don’t eat that pl-“

Dipper popped it in his mouth and began to chew and to Henry’s horror he found that just as Dipper found the meat to taste good, so did he.

“ _Man_ it’s been awhile since I’ve tasted hu-“

Henry was done, he was fucking done, and Dipper needed to leave _now._

“Dipper, get out,” Henry said in a quiet tone of voice that if his brother in law had been in a more sane frame of mind would have made him pause.

“Are you _kidding_ me?! The fun’s just getting started! You don’t even know what you can do with this meatsack! You hold yourself back all the time; why? Honestly, this thing is going to waste with you in it-”

Henry wasn’t sure how he could ‘push’ considering that he had no control over a physical form at the present but for lack of a better term, Henry pushed, he _shoved_ at Dipper with all of his might.

“Get. Out. _Now,”_ Henry gritted out. His soul touched Dipper’s and-

And

Oh fuck.  

He thought it was bad when Dipper possessed him in that first onslaught, the realization that he had lost control of his body and how completely unnatural that was.

This?

This was infinitely worse. 

Henry had invited a tornado, an ocean, a wildfire, something completely alien and unknowable into him and he wouldn’t _leave_ and it felt wrong, felt like his body was forever sullied, like a million bugs crawling under his skin, like….like…he…he couldn’t _think_ couldn’t _do­_ anything….

If he were in a calmer frame of mind, or removed from the situation, Henry would know, would realize, that he was having a massive panic attack.

But he was here, and Dipper was laughing and messing with his fingers, bending them back to see how far they’d go, and this needed to stop _now._

Because Henry could feel the same hunger they'd sensed from the wendigo, the urge to devour, to consume, to fight, coming from Dipper.

That hunger was looking at his soul now with a slavering, starving glare, and Henry could feel himself begin to bleed into Dipper, his soul being inexorably drug in, without even any conscious thought or effort from Dipper.

The last thing Henry thought before he broke, before he blacked out, was that this is what it must feel like for a mouse to be clutched in the talons of a hawk.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One minute Dipper was chewing on some wendigo, and wondering if he could get away with maybe taking that dismembered home with them, the next minute it felt like someone had punched them in the stomach.

Henry was beating against Dipper, against the constraints of their body, mindlessly slamming against Dipper, pushing and thrusting and soundlessly screaming at him to _leave._

“Henry, Henry what’s wrong?” Dipper tried to ask, but there was no answer from his brother in law, almost as if he had passed out… or had lost his mind.

As it was, if Dipper had been any other demon or spirit, Henry would have kicked him out already. The amount of will that Henry possessed was….kind of frightening to Dipper, honestly. There was a small, dark spot of Henry’s soul that he was seeing for the first time, all terrible iron will and the impression of something sleeping that should just be left alone.

But why was Henry freaking out so much anyway?  He was making their heart race and sweat break out on their brow and it was a little annoying. Honestly, blood _tasted_ better in this form and Dipper was _hungry._ Dipper concentrated for a second and _oh fuck_.

He could feel the fear coming off of Henry in sick throbbing waves, all blood reds and bruise purples, fear that had driven Henry to the point of senselessness. Effort that would have sent any other soul out of his body had no effect on Dipper, may as well have been a toddler beating at him with small fists.

Being in their body, Dipper realized suddenly, was destroying Henry’s soul bit by bit.

 _Good_ , a small part of him whispered, a part of him that Dipper tried really hard to ignore usually, but the taste of blood was rich in their mouth, in _his_ mouth and he couldn’t help but listen.

He could do so much with an actual vessel at his command. No deals required, just a meat puppet he could enter any time he wanted, and Henry had been holding back from them, from him. Dipper hadn’t realized how strong the redhead was until his body became their body, felt the lithe strength in their arms and legs, realized how large their hands were, how guileless their face looked.

He could have _fun_ with this body once he ate the other soul in here and _what the fuck was he thinking?_

This was _Henry_ , Mabel’s husband, his brother.

Henry, who was patient with their shenanigans, who shrugged off bleeding walls and eldritch weapons in the bathroom, who put on a brave face even when Dipper could smell his fear, sense the rapid beat of his heart.

Henry who could have run away, should have run away a long time ago but stayed.

Henry who had trusted him with his body when Dipper needed help and what had he done to repay the favor but come within a knife’s edge of destroying him utterly and stealing his life away.

Even as he thought this, a part of Dipper relished the pathetic struggles of Henry’s soul, drank deeply from the waves of terror coming off of him.

But that part of him was just that. A part. Not the whole. And _all_ of Dipper knew what he was doing was wrong, knew he had hurt one of the most important people in his life deeply, perhaps irrevocably.

Ignoring the wails coming from within himself, wails that sounded a little too close to a certain yellow triangle for comfort, Dipper separated his soul from Henry’s and then phased out of his brother’s body.

Henry would have fallen to the ground with a hard thump, but mercy of mercies, Dipper was still on this plane, and caught him before he hit the ground. Dipper blipped them to the Shack, ignoring the sick feeling of doing a deed so one sided, the wail of his soul demanding a deal.

They blipped into reality in Henry and Mabel’s bedroom. Dipper flipped Henry onto the bed, and threw some covers over him, before fading into the mindscape.

\-------

Henry hadn’t seen hide or hair of his brother-in-law in over a day and Mabel was due home in a few hours.

He sighed. This had gone on long enough. He got up with a wince from the recliner, still sore from having his body used to rip another living being into shreds, and made his way out to the porch, grabbing a handful of candy from the bucket by the back door as he did.

He pulled out an embroidered handkerchief that Mabel had made for him a few months ago, and pricked one of his numerous scabs, letting the blood drip onto the stitched summoning circle, the blood staining the axe in the circle red.

“Dipper, stop sulking and come here and talk to me please.”

There was none of Dipper’s usual theatrics, just empty space one minute, and Dipper on the porch swing by him the next.

Henry tried to hand over the candy, but Dipper didn’t move, didn’t even look at him, so Henry sighed and dumped it in Dipper’s lap.

“Candy for a chat?” he asked gently.

Dipper still didn’t say anything, still couldn’t look Henry in the eye.

Henry sighed. “Dipper, it’s okay.”

That provoked a reaction out of him finally. Dipper’s head whipped over to glare at Henry.

_“H̶̻o̮͖̼̹w͏̙̜̮͍͚ͅ ̞͉̹c̯̻͢a̘̲̗̻̺͔͙n̼̩̮̙͔ ͏͕̙͖̻͇̣y̟̲̤̫̙o̙͈̗̯u͔͖̞̭̩ ͖͇̟̪͇͖s̥̲̫͓a̢̠͍͎̥̫y̢̦͇ͅ ̱̪t̯h̞̜̮a͉̮̮t̪͙̳̼?̶̯̗͕̞̞͙”_

“Very easily as a matter of fact-“

Dipper groaned, which exactly was the reaction Henry was hoping for.

“Look, what you did was pretty fucked up-“

His brother buried his face in his hands but Henry wasn’t going to give Dipper time to sulk.

“But I….I could hear you, even when I was out of it. I know the temptation you had. And I know that you ignored it and did the right thing. It…it’s okay Dipper, I promise.”

He laid a hand on Dipper’s shoulder, saw as a tear tracked down Dipper’s face.

“How can you say that Henry? You should be taking Mab-“

Henry rolled his eyes. “Don’t even start with that.” He softened a bit. “I say that because everyone is capable of doing bad things, human or demon. What’s important is that you did the right thing, rather than the wrong one.”

He looked down at his hands. “I…Dipper…I don’t think I can let you do that again. I…just can’t.” He pulled his hand off of Dipper’s shoulder, and took up one of Dipper’s hands.

“But I’ve seen your soul now, seen every bit of it, and you know what? I still think you’re a good guy.”

Dipper was staring at Henry like a fish, eyes agog and mouth gaping.

“I know this is true,” Henry said softly. “And you should too.”

Dipper stared at Henry for another second before grabbing Henry into a massive hug, squeezing tight and

“Oh god, Dipper, my ribs, I love you too but maybe squeeze a little less hard?”


	2. coda

Dipper was watching his brother-in-law sleep.

Luckily, he was saved from it being entirely creepy from the fact he was doing this while Henry was napping in front of the TV as opposed to watching him sleep in bed at night.

He hovered in the air over Henry’s head and frowned down at the red curls and sweater vest below him.

Henry let out a snort, and began to lightly snore.

Two weeks ago they had gone wendigo hunting, and as Henry had seen every part of Dipper’s soul, so had he seen every part of Henry’s.

There was a dark spot in his brother’s soul, and it was, for lack of a better term, kind of freaking the fuck out of Dipper.

It wasn’t that there was a darkness within Henry that was freaking Dipper out. That was everyone. Stan was all murky and dark splotches all over his soul, splotches that Dipper had long since decided to leave well enough alone. Even Mabel had an inner ruthlessness in her, one that made even him quail sometimes in the face of her righteous fury.

Henry though…..

Dipper watched as Henry let out a really impressive snort, and an old episode of _Ducktective_ came on the TV.

That tiny black spot on Henry’s soul….it felt like it was…was _watching_ him.

Dipper wasn’t sure what he was scared of more:  the part of Henry that was fury and anger and burned so terribly cold-

Or the iron will that kept it locked up deep inside of him.


End file.
